didn't want to break his heart

I live in a pretty small town, small enough that I might be unable to avoid certain people. I feel fortunate that I have a fairly short list of people who I worry about running into. One of them being the typical, an ex-boyfriend.

One of my exes and I have not been in contact for almost a year. But of course, I still think of him, and sometimes, I get flashes of our breakup. And I think about how, if he wanted to, he could easily paint me as a horrible person, even successfully turning all of his friends against me. And maybe some might think he has the right to do so.

We broke up, in person, at the same bar we went to on our first date.

I did the breaking up, but I did such a bad job that he thought we were still together afterward. I am not joking, I don’t know how I was that bad at it.

It was way harder than I thought, and I was so focused on not hurting his feelings that who knows if I ever said the words, “I want to break up.”

For once in my life, I didn’t write out what I was going to say (in most serious conversations, I write it out in my notes app first) since the breakup wasn’t planned.

I know I shouldn’t have done it when I did because it was a big day for him.

I broke up with him on the first day of his new job, which he worked very hard to get. Before he could start the job, he had to first get licensed and had to take many tests and study for hours. I spent all summer watching him spend weeks at the library. I was genuinely so proud of him for the work finally paying off.

I knew if I broke up with him on this day, the first day of what was supposed to be an amazing day. I would officially be the worst person in his retelling of the story.

We were out for celebratory drinks to celebrate his first day of the new job. I had journaled earlier that day and concluded that I had to end things, and desperately needed to be alone. If I was honest I knew it months prior, but with women sometimes it takes us a few months to accept that truth.

I wanted to wait, I had to wait, I couldn’t do it today. I had to get through a few beers, put on a smile, and be a good girlfriend who celebrates his hard work.

I stare at him as he sits across from me smoking his favorite cigarette, a Marlboro Red. He is wearing the new shirt I bought, smiling, and telling me about his new office. He goes on about how he wants me to print out a photo of myself to put on his desk. As those words fell out of his mouth, my smile collapsed. I tried to force the smile back on my face but it was too late, he had picked up that something was wrong.

He asked me to tell him what was on my mind, and I tried to say, no let’s not talk about it tonight, but he insisted.

The next thing I knew, I was attempting to explain why I had to break up with him.

“I am so depressed, and I watch myself as I am taking it out on you. It’s not fair, you deserve so much more. Plus, we have been fighting all the time, and we haven’t spent the night together in months. I can’t be a good partner to you with where my head is right now. I can barely get up to go to work.”

He held my hand across the wooden bench and said that he loved me and that we could get through this. But I just shook my head as tears fell down my cheeks.

I didn’t want to get through it with him, I needed to get through it on my own.

Once he started crying, I started to backpeddle. I continued to ramble on saying things like, maybe this is temporary. Or I might change my mind. Or maybe it’s just bad timing. Or maybe this is not the right call but I have to try something.

I told him I didn’t know what I was doing with my life. Because I didn’t know what I was doing. When I got home we Facetimed each other and I said I said I regretted it.

But what I meant is I regretted doing it because it hurt him.

As the days followed I thought about the men who had ghosted me. And how I always thought, why wouldn’t they just tell me what went wrong? I now understood.

It is not for the faint of heart, to look into someone’s eyes and say goodbye.

It’s hard when you love someone to hurt them, and I didn’t plan to do it. I never wanted to do it, which is why I put it off longer than I should have.

I felt terrible as he kept texting me wanting to make things work out.

When I told my parents what happened and how he wasn’t accepting we were done. My dad told me that I should never give a man any hope if there isn’t any. He told me, that men hold onto that hope forever. And so a few weeks later, I listened to his advice. And chose to be very harsh stop responding, and block him from everything. I had to be the bad guy in enforcing that we were no longer speaking in the hopes that he’d be able to begin to move on.

As the months followed, a new fear popped up.

What if he thinks I never really cared about him? It is a great question, commonly attempted to be answered in films, and music about love.

How can you love someone, plan a future, and then just change your mind?

It’s easier to believe they never loved you than to accept that they once did and no longer do. We want to believe that relationships last forever, so when we are inside of them that’s how we act, like they will.

I don’t necessarily think anything is wrong with that.

Love is an all-encompassing feeling.

We had baby names picked out, future homes we looked at, and I even sent him engagement rings I liked. I met his family, his grandma gave me art and we spent his mom’s birthday together. I was there, I was in love, and I was putting in the work.

Because I truly believed, at that time, we were going to last.

I recently was watching a couple on reality TV break up and one yelled at the other, “Did all the promises you made me, mean nothing to you?” And all of a sudden, I was imagining my ex yelling that at me. I felt the rage inside me, in my throat, and I wanted to start to yell back at the TV “I did! I meant every word! I promise I did!”

I hope if he ever reads this he can hear the pain I still feel for something I couldn’t control. Love sometimes isn’t enough, and it’s a tragedy when it isn’t.

Lately, I have been alone a lot, but it’s given me a lot of time to just reflect and think.

And I have started to think of relationships like that feeling when you rant to someone about how good a movie is, then you go back and watch it again and realize, for some reason, it isn’t as good as you remember.

When you first watched the movie, you felt it was incredible.

Perhaps that day you saw it you were in the perfect time in your life to watch it.

You were in comfy sweatpants, the movie theater popcorn had put just enough butter and the audience was laughing alongside you.

All these different factors came into play, making that first watch so lovely.

But then when one of those factors isn’t there the next time you watch, it doesn’t feel as incredible.

Does that mean it was never a good movie? I don’t think so.

What I am trying to say is that I believe just because something was good and now it seems bad, doesn’t mean it wasn’t ever good.

Our love was real, it just didn’t have enough oxygen to keep burning. And sometimes, that happens and it shouldn’t take away the warmth of the fire that was once there.

When he retells the story of our breakup, I could see someone saying, “Wow what an asshole.” He could go on, and paint me as the villain. I know I made a lot of mistakes in that relationship. I could see his friends all saying how they never liked me anyway.

I know this could happen because I have been on the other side.

Telling a girl that he’s an asshole and she deserves better.

This might be true, and obviously, if he is abusive this doesn’t apply. But for the rest, for the ones like me, what also might be true is that the breakup hurt him too. And maybe the pain of her heartbreak is blurring the truth, that his dumping her doesn’t make him automatically an asshole.

We want to separate ourselves from the idea that we too could cause harm. That only bad people hurt others, instead of the truth that everyone can hurt someone’s feelings, and probably has.

If I do run into my ex, I don’t know what it will look like.

Maybe he will try to embrace me in for a hug, or maybe he will look at me and leave the bar. I will accept however he chooses to go about it. I don’t think since I caused the harm, I have any right to be upset with how he would react to seeing my face.

I have not returned to that bar I broke up with him since. It was his favorite spot and so I have graciously given it back to him.

I hope since our breakup he has brought new girls out for a drink. I hope he has created enough good memories without me there that the laughs we shared aren’t as loud.

And I don’t think we should get back together.

We had fun, and he came into my life when I needed him to. We laughed a lot together, he was very childlike and taught me to find my inner child again.

When I rewatch the movie of us now, I see some important factors that would always have made us unable to last long term. We tried hard to pretend they weren’t there.

I now believe love isn’t something that has to be forever to be true.

It can sometimes be just a pit stop for two people to love and learn from each other before one day, one of them realizes, it’s time to move on.

And hopefully, they will one day stop at a love that lasts a lifetime.